34 ways to distract people from your unprepared beach body

Let’s do this!

Some people spend the months and weeks leading up to summer really honing their bodies – getting tight little butts and hairless balls and doing ab work and making their boobs perky. Getting it so that their muscles have big veins in them, like penises, or willies. Big dick-arms for everyone to marvel at. Then the rest of us just carry on with normal life, eating food and digesting it, sitting on chairs, before getting a bit agitated and nail-bitey around July-time when we realise that the ole body is going to have to come out soon. The beach is looming, and perhaps you can’t bounce medicine balls off your stomach yet, or your gorgeous arse is the size of the moon. Whatever way, mercifully for everyone, I look the scientific opposite of excellent in trunks, so I’ve been doing my research and have come up with a number of fool-proof quick-fixes for those of us who didn’t get “beach body ready” quick enough. You’re welcome, world.

Wear an enormous summer poncho

Arrive at the beach at sunrise and stay in the same position until sunset, even if policemen and doctors start prodding you with a stick and checking your pulse

Command your family to scream and cause a distracting commotion whenever you feel like standing up

Constantly have a towel wrapped around you like a big sausage roll made of cloth

If you’re a man always have an erection as a distraction

If you’re a woman, also always have an erection as a distraction

In the off-chance that you might bump into someone from work, get your entire face tattooed so that they won’t recognize you

OR, get a really amazing body tattooed onto your normal one

Paint yourself gold and pretend to be an ancient statue that your archeologist family has just dug up

Wear enormous flowing gowns and pretend to be the Demeter, Goddess of Harvest, or Hephaestus, God of Fire

Wear your hair in a top knot and have a lamp at your feet, because you are now, as far as people are concerned, a genie

Tell people you’re a Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now tribute act

Always arrive at the beach singing “Peace in the Valley, Peace in the City etc…” surrounded by gorgeous gay dancers

Arrive surreptitiously behind a walking elephant

Draw a great set of abs onto your soft belly in felt tip

Continually suck your stomach in, preferably to the point where you can’t speak to anyone and you eventually pass out

Get a serious amount of plastic surgery done – boobs, arse, lipo, groin, erect a wall of boulder-teeth in your mouth, do something to your eyes

Run immediately and as quickly as you can into the sea and then stand there all afternoon, shivering and looking wistfully at the people on the beach

Demand a second referendum for the day you plan to do most of your sunbathing, get tens of millions to sign a petition, but don’t actually vote yourself (wastes valuable tanning time)

Be carrying the most beautiful, eye-catching carpet over your shoulder at all times

Dig a shallow grave and lie in it – makes you look super-thin

Walk behind the sexiest person in the history of the universe

Walk behind the ugliest person in the history of the universe

Walk behind the world’s tallest man

Walk behind the world’s angriest horse

Walk behind the world’s cutest baby chicken

Lurk behind a bush until no one’s looking, then grab a few blasts of the sun’s hot molten rays, then quickly disappear behind the bush again

Get to the beach at 4am and hide behind a windbreaker all day, occasionally going “psst” at people so you don’t feel so completely alone

Paint yourself so it looks like your whole body is just an ill-fitting wetsuit

Be carrying a lion

Only go on the beach at nighttime when everyone is in bed or having great sex

Go completely bottomless so that people can’t stop staring at your alluring genitals

Bury yourself up to your neck in sand and just tan your whole face (screaming optional)

Thrust your shoulders back and have DEAL WITH IT written on your torso in lipstick